Fabulous Find (pssst something for those menopausal power surges)

This spring, I hosted the UK Herbarium group blog party one month and my dear friend Rita contributed her recipe for elderflower cordial to the party. When our elderflowers bloomed I gathered some and followed her recipe. Simply delicious and I began to just crave a nice cold glass of water mixed with the cordial in the evenings. Coincidentally, I started sleeping like a newborn baby… I eventually ran out of the cordial … and started sleeping poorly again…The other day I just developed this powerful CRAVING for the cordial and thought, well I will just make a batch with some elderflower I had dried.. in the meantime I wrote Rita and told her how I was craving it and mentioned that strangely, I had not slept as well  in the last few months as I did while enjoying the cordial nightly. She said she had never heard of elderflower as a sleep aid either, so I went to my bookshelves and just chose Backyard Medicine by Julie Bruton-Seal and Matthew Seal to reference. I figured I would just pour through all the different books and try to figure out just why this cordial made me sleep so soundly! Well right away I see that in that book, the cordial is recommended for hot flashes! A light bulb went off and I have it figured out! You see I thought I was through with my hot flashing part of menopause. I no longer can count up to 35 distinct power surges per hour, wake up so drenched I have to change night shirts 6, 7, 8 times a night. I occasionally feel a bit of a surge, but nothing like I used to feel. The rapid pulse, anxious almost anxiety type of feeling. And I have just attributed my poor sleep pattern of waking several times a night on the kitties wrestling on the covers or one of them cuddled up in my tummy too tight to why I was just a bit too hot…well I know now I must be still having hot flashes, just not as severe, so that is why the elderflower cordial helps me sleep so well.. it is controlling the power surge and keeping me at an even keel! lol! Now in looking back at the really intense flashes I must say I did use cold elderflower tea quite a bit, and it did help, but I believe if I would have been making this cordial then, and just keeping a thermos of cool water and cordial with me at all times I would have had a much, much easier time of it, ( and lets face it, the cordial just tastes yummier than the tea so would have used it more).  I had to rush and share this with all of you, hoping that it will help one of my hot flashing mama friends deal with her power surges too:) 

Children love this cordial too. Don’t worry, perfectly safe for them!

Lily squeezing all the juice out of the lemon slices

And enjoying her cordial!

Big honey and herbal hugs to all of you who visit Comfrey Cottages xx

Elderflower Cordial and a Roadtrip

I had a chance to harvest some elderflowers and try the lovely elderflower cordial recipe, my sweet friend Rita shared with us:) It is so delicious!

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My hubby, Eric and I took a daytrip and first went to Burlington, Iowa where we saw something weird. The mayflies had hatched and there were piles of them either dead or dying everywhere around the visitor center!

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Weird huh? There were still a lot of them flying all over the place!

We then decided to go back over to the Illinois side of the Mississippi River and take The River Road to Navoo.

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My favorite historic building there is the apothecary and variety store

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We had been to this historic village before, so I had just wanted to briefly swing into revisit this apothecary and revisit their medicinal gardens. Was I disappointed! They had ripped out all their huge mature plants and put in new ones, which were really more annual types so not near as interesting to me:( Also, Eric found right on the outside of the gardens a trap with a poor raccoon which had obviously been in there a long time and was very thirsty, hot, and probably hungry! So inside the building I tromped to raise hell and insist someone let the poor thing go, and if they must trap and release them, to check their traps more often! ggggggrrrrrrrr!

Poor little fellers big offense was raiding trash cans! I suggested those folks might do better to bunge strap their cans, then to trap and torture poor critters! These building are by a river and a woods, for pete’s sake! Do they really think raccoons won’t try and raid their cans?!

I frankly was glad to get out of there after that, so we just travelled on down the river road, looking at this and that until we ended up at Quincy, Illinois. There we discovered an unusual building Villa Kathrine, so we took a tour.

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So a little bit of herbal deliciousness and a glimpse at our road trip:)

Big herbal and honey hugs to all who visit Comfrey Cottages xx

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